For Moments When You Must Do Something: Practice Sign Language And Sing

I am getting sick. There is a pesky almost-cough hovering the back of my throat. My eyelids feel tired and droop below their normal height. I woke up from six restless hours of sleep wondering why there was so much talk of leaving. It's tomorrow. It's tomorrow. I have arrived at the culminating moment of departure and friends, my body is waging war against the idea. It wants nothing but to curl up on this semi-comfortable couch and hide from anything remotely related to AirTran 807 Baltimore (BWI) - Logan (BOS).

So instead of packing my suitcase, instead of finding my lone sock or finally clearing things out from under the bed, I am sitting on said uncomfortable couch and practicing sign language. You see, I am clinging to the moments of the semester where I have felt most myself, most alive, most peaceful. Sign language, the physical embodiments of the words I love (and write) so often and so dearly, has become a place of peace for me as I contemplate leaving.

So YouTube plays me praise music and I practice. Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me... Beautiful One, I love... My God is mighty to save. I practice these phrases over and over with my hands, making signs for "beautiful" and "soul" and "savior" with a kind of hopeful desperation. I cling to sign language because I have become so much more of myself in learning to speak with my hands, in learning to love words when they are not spoken but created in the air. I practice, and I sign. I sit in the still of this living room that soon will no longer be mine... and there it is: a glimmer of peace, a glimmer of becoming ready to go home, a knowledge that God is good, and in my voice and in my hands, I can proclaim that goodness.

Today is a busy day - coffees scattered between more official meetings and final outings - and I can feel my need to "do something" taking over my desire to simply be in the space I am in for one last moment and one last day. A good friend told me in a letter that "a thing is mighty big if time and distance cannot shrink it." (Zora Neale Hurston first said so, but I can hear my friend saying it as well). Her words are true, and it is my hope that this semester, the people, the places, the work... are big enough to withstand the impending time and distance pulling me away.

So, in these moments, when we are paralyzed by a desire to fill our days running around and to do nothing, I am choosing to sign, and to sing. I choose to lift my voice in its quivering way, with Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson in "Winter Song." I choose to learn the signs to sing "Grace Like Rain" with my hands. I choose to pause, to seek peacefulness, to let my voice and hands and heart unite. I choose to trust that this semester is a mighty big thing, that my friendships here are mighty big things, and that the joy of God Himself is a mighty big thing, that neither time nor distance nor trial nor fear can shrink.

Love,
Hilary

For those we Love

Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy
never-failing care and love, for this life and the life to come,
knowing that thou art doing for them better things than we
can desire or pray for; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Awake, My Soul: Mumford & Sons and a Midweek Reflection on the Advent Season

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
My weakness I feel I must finally show...

Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your Maker. (Mumford & Sons, "Awake My Soul")

This song skyrocketed to the top of my "most play" category in iTunes soon after I got the CD courtesy of Amazon. There is something in the rhythm of the song that speaks to me, something in its haunting, rollicking, almost a lullaby but then not at all... it's the in-between nature of the song that I fall in love with anew every time I hear it.

How fickle my heart. Here I am, just a few short days away from returning to Boston, and my heart is fickle. It loves everything here too much, everything at home too much, and everything not enough. I want to cry and take a plane home today. I want to laugh and hide in the basement of my building so that I miss my flight. But there it is: my fickle heart. I am fickle about a lot more than simply my excitement and sorrow at the close of this semester. I am fickle about Advent. I preach (on this blog and in my exuberant conversations with others) how much I love this time of preparation. But I have not practiced preparation this week so far. I keep saying I will do a daily devotional for Advent, that I will write in my journal, that I will pause and reflect. Selah. Selah. Pause and reflect. And instead I rush from moment to moment, afraid to lose any of them, afraid to be fully present where I am because I anticipate the leaving. I have no selah. I lack reflection and preparation. My heart is fickle.

How woozy my eyes. Have you ever thought about our lack of vision? So much of our world goes unseen because our eyes are woozy. I am realizing that I need glasses for distance vision (well, I've needed glasses for distance for about two years but have yet to get them and wear an appropriate prescription)... and the amount I cannot see sometimes surprises me (don't worry, friends, an appointment with the eye doctor is in the offing, at least it should be). I am astounded, however, at what I choose not to see. I choose not to see the glory of this world. I choose not to see the people here as glorious creatures. I choose not to believe in the best of them, and forsake the vision that they are people of the living God. My eyes are woozy.

I struggle to find any truth in your lies. I have been puzzling over this line for a few minutes as I have been writing, because I do not know whether or not I have such a struggle to tell, or any semi-profound thoughts on the subject. But truth and lies are certainly a part of Advent preparation. In Advent, the Truth arrives, in flesh, in embodied, human form. I am asked, and I ask myself, to prepare for the entrance of Truth into my heart. And to do so, I must clear away the cobwebs of lies. We tell so many lies, we repeat them, we love them and carry them with us. And I struggle to find the truth amidst the lies of my heart this Advent season. Questions to which I tell myself untruthful answers (for example, Am I beautiful? Am I worthy? which over and over I answer poorly), for example... I struggle to find truth in those lies.

And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know. Advent. I don't know the meaning of the coming of the Lord. I don't know what it will mean for Christ to become incarnate in my heart this Christmas season, and I do not know how to prepare for His arrival. My heart stumbles upon these truths, in my thinking throughout the day - the quiet joy at signing "Beautiful One" correctly during worship tonight, the recognition that a friendship begun here will continue to build itself and grow in the days and years to come, the exuberance that I am, despite my shortcomings, most alive in teaching Dominique how to do basic algebra. All of these moments my heart stumbles upon, and I don't know what to think of them. All of these are part of the continuing incarnation and formation of Christ's presence in my heart, but I stumble because I don't know. My heart stumbles on things I don't know.

Awake my soul. Awake, my soul! Did you hear? Jesus Christ will be born soon! Did you hear? The Lord is coming into the world? Did you hear? All things are being made new. I have been listening to a song on repeat the past few days: New Again, by Brad Paisley and Sara Evans. It is a beautiful, heart wrenching song and I find myself drawn to repeat it over and over again in an attempt to awaken my soul from its anxiety about leaving DC, its sadness at the pending changes in my life, and its reluctance to practice preparation for Christ's coming. But, as Mumford & Sons so rightly says, you were made to meet your Maker. I was; and at Christmas, I meet Him anew, I celebrate the first and life-altering meeting of His initial entrance into my heart.

Awake, my soul. 


Love,
Hilary

Equal Justice Under... 30 Degrees (SCOTUS, Justices and an Adventurous DC Morning)

There is nothing quite like living in the city where a ten minute walk will send you to the line to hear the Supreme Court's oral argument session. There is nothing like the fact that you can wake up at 7am on a Monday morning, bundle up in more jackets than you think humanly possible, and take your good friend to get toffee nut lattes and stand in the freezing December wind waiting to get into that hallowed room.

Friends, I live in such a city. And yesterday, I lived out such a dream.

My obsession with the Supreme Court began in fifth grade. While we were learning about civic government (important lessons, to be sure) and filling out worksheets designating the three branches of government, I began to realize that being President was nothing compared with being Chief Justice. As Chief Justice, you got to wear those cool looking academic/Harry Potter robes that my dad always wears to Gordon graduations! As Chief Justice, you get to hold the Bible and administer the oath to the President! As Chief Justice, you get to sit in the very center of the most beautiful room in the city of Washington, DC! As Chief Justice... you got it pretty sweet.

And it was all a rushing downhill speed skating love affair. I read about John Roberts. I wrote a "Coursus Honorum" in high school following how JR had become Chief Justice, from Harvard to Harvard to law firm to district judge... I was (and in so many ways still am) amazed by that man's legal mind and the career he carved in his life. I took Constitutional Law my freshman year of college with one Dr. T. Sherratt, and I can say without hesitation that it has been the class in which I learned the most. We read five cases per class, briefed probably over 75 cases total, did two simulations and got the chance to both argue before the Court and to be the Court. If any of you who read this blog have ever been interested in constitutional law, I give the class my highest recommendation. You learn more about the Supreme Court, the way that law is crafted and interpreted, and how to identify ways of viewing the Constitution.

But I digress. Yesterday Hannah and I sipped our Starbucks as we stood with our sneakers and black flats on the marble steps in front of the soaring columns and the "Equal Justice Under Law" engraving. 8:15 became 8:30 became 9:00, when we knew they would let people into the building to be seated for the day's oral arguments. We were line numbers 53 and 54. They took in the first 50 people. We looked at each other, horrified. We had made it up to the very front of the line and they weren't going to let us in!

I was tempted to charge the building, make a run for it, because at this point more blood would have gotten to my freezing toes had I charged one of the security guards. I hopped up and down; Hannah and I chatted about plans to see each other after this crazy adventure in DC ends. 9:00 became 9:25 and the guards looked at the long line of public citizens from behind their ski masks and warm fuzzy hats and their eyes seemed to crinkle in sympathy (or perhaps laughter).

I made eye contact with one of the guards and he smiled at me. Yes! I thought. My feminine wiles will surely get this man to let me and my friend into the hallowed building where justice resides and balances the legislature behind me! Score one for Hilary!

No such luck. The guard shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "Tough luck... I know it's 30 degrees, I know the wind is blowing in all the possible openings of your many layers of clothing at 15 mph, and I know you've been here for at least an hour in the cold. However, justice requires that you wait your turn in line just like everyone else."

Feminine wiles defeated, I turned around and gasped. I still can't quite get over the fact that the Supreme Court building overlooks the back of the Capitol. I can't get over their proximity, and how the SCOTUS building really seems to be watching the Capitol building. I wonder how often they go to hang out in each other's buildings... our government branches are, when you think about, really just next door neighbors. I make a law over here, and you provide judicial review, and our neighbor over there signs it when it's been finished in my home.

Needless to say, we got into the building and number 54 (me) was the last one seated before the honorable justices of the United States Supreme Court began presiding over the room. Imagine for a moment you are in the studio of your favorite movie or TV show. You can't believe it, but you're seeing the cast of Glee or Grey's Anatomy or Shutter Island or The Hours at work. You can see them rehearse and do a take and you realize, you are watching the creation of the thing you love.

Breyer asks better, more biting questions than the most provocative moderator in a Presidential debate; Justice Alito's legal reasoning hushed his colleagues and prompted an entirely new discussion of the Pepper v. United States case. Chief Justice Roberts was fair, asking difficult questions of both sides that almost made it feel like neither could win. Justice Scalia, leaning back in his chair and almost chuckling to himself, interrupted, scolded, and through his sarcasm he pinpointed some of the most pressing legal issues that the lawyer presenting the case seemed to forget.

These justices demonstrated, in my one magical morning at the Supreme Court, that it is possible to think about the law in a dynamic, clever, deep and powerful way. It is possible even for me to begin to think about the law this way. How many times have I, in the course of this semester, been frustrated by the way that I see "the sausage being made"? How many times have I wondered whether we should just give the EPA the power to make energy policy, simply because no one seems able to get anything done comprehensively? Where is the law, I want to ask myself at every networking power play. Where is the law as I want to understand it, as living, important and governing?

Stand in the bitter cold on a December morning in the heart of Capitol Hill. Stand with your mismatched scarf, hat and gloves and drink a tall toffee nut latte, with a good friend, trying not to laugh at the very shined shoes of the group of businessmen in front of you... and as you ascend the steps of the building on First St., NE across from the Capitol, I think you may find one place where law is practiced that way.

Love,
Hilary